I lowered my voice even further. “What if whoever slashed those shields wasn’t interested in killing you or me, or getting the Saghred?” I said. “What if they wanted to see just how much damage Piaras was capable of? You said it yourself that he’s a weapon; Ronan said he’s lethal. One of those choice patrons might be in the black market for a spellsinger.” I stared hard at him. “I hear you were a kick-ass prodigy in your day. Did anyone try to kidnap you?”
Mychael looked down at me, his jaw clenching and unclenching. “If you take one step toward Tam, Vegard will sit on you.”
Chapter 12
I’d been inside Sirens in Mermeia, so I knew what to expect. Piaras had never seen the inside of either one of Tam’s nightclubs. His brown eyes were wide as he took it all in.
The Sirens nightclub in Mermeia was mainly a gambling parlor. The Sirens on the Isle of Mid offered spellsinging as the featured specialty. So far there were only two links in what Tam planned to become a chain of Sirens nightclubs.
On the outside, Sirens looked less like what one would expect of a nightclub, and more like an expensive manor house. The diamond-shaped, lead-paned windows belonged to the restaurant part of the establishment. We were in the interior theatre where the shows took place.
On the main floor of the theatre were small tables, each covered in a crisp white cloth and set with a single pale lightglobe in its center. There were either two or four chairs at each table, with enough room between each for servers to discreetly fill drink orders—and to give Sirens’s guests privacy to enjoy the show. The second-floor dining suites were like private boxes in a fine theatre. Columns stretched from the floor to the high, vaulted ceiling, carved with mermaids and mermen—sirens that could sing men or women to their doom—or somewhere much more enjoyable. From what I could see, “frolicsome” didn’t even begin to describe the activities the carvings were engaged in. I steered Piaras around the columns.
The stage wasn’t large; it didn’t need to be. Sirens was about spellsingers, and what they could do to an audience. Spellsingers didn’t need space, just flawless acoustics, so that a whispered word sounded like it was being whispered directly into the ear of a patron at the farthest table from the stage.
Mychael had gone to Tam’s office. I stayed with Piaras.
Close to two dozen people were seated at various tables near the stage. When Ronan had said “choice patrons,” what I saw was pretty much what I’d expected. The mixture of elves, goblins, and humans had the air of privilege that only came with obscene wealth. Not surprisingly, the elves sat on one side of the theatre, the goblins on the other. The humans had arranged themselves more or less in the middle. Some of the patrons were magically talented; most were just rich. Of the talents, I didn’t sense any nefarious purpose, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.
Ronan was conferring with one of his students onstage. She’d just finished a love song that quite frankly hadn’t done a thing for me. There were shields at the base of the stage that would prevent spellsongs from having their full effect. They could be strengthened or lowered as needed. They could have turned them off for this girl. Maybe it was just me she left cold, but I didn’t think so. With spellsinging, the sex of the singer and the listener shouldn’t matter. A truly gifted spellsinger could make you forget that you even had a sexual preference. Ronan’s student was a regally beautiful goblin who came complete with her own entourage. Two armed and leather-armored bodyguards stood nearby, their eyes alert to her and everyone else in the room. The goblin girl was dressed in the height of fashion, and wore more jewelry than was tasteful. I thought one piece was particularly tasteless. A mirror pendant hung from a rope of diamonds around the girl’s neck. A mirror mage. Figures. A human hairstylist fussed with elaborately jeweled clips holding back the girl’s waist-length blue-black hair. One of the clips pulled the goblin’s hair and the girl spun and hissed something, the back of her hand stopping just short of the human’s face.
“Countess Sanura Mal’Salin,” Piaras told me as if that explained everything.
It did.
Apparently Ronan invited his best students—or the most politically advantageous. For years the goblin royal family had snubbed the Conclave college, until about ten years ago when goblin aristocrats started filtering into the college classrooms—and their gold started flooding into the college coffers. I wondered if Mal’Salin gold was paying for Ronan’s recital hall renovation.
Six students lounged at a cluster of tables at the base of the stage: three elves, two humans, and another goblin. None of them had entourages. I chuckled. It looked like Piaras had a small platoon in his wake. The platoon was for me, but no one here knew that. Vegard and Riston hung back a few feet to give Piaras and me the semblance of privacy. The others deployed themselves around the theatre. I saw a familiar young goblin leaning casually against one of the siren-covered columns, his arms crossed over his chest, watching the countess with amusement.
“Is the goblin next to the column one of Ronan’s students?” I asked Piaras.
Piaras nodded. “Talon Tandu. He also works here.”
“Do you know if he’s any good?” I asked.
“I heard him briefly in the maestro’s tower yesterday. I thought he was very good.” Piaras was silent for a moment. “Paladin Eiliesor didn’t want you to come here.”
“He didn’t want me to leave the citadel,” I corrected.
Piaras’s lips turned up in a brief smile. “No, I distinctly heard the words ‘Tam’ and ‘Sirens.’ I also heard my name more than once. You don’t go into a corner to argue about giving someone moral support.”
Crap. The kid’s got elf ears, Raine. You’ve got a pair yourself. They’re not just there to look good.
“Sounds like we should have left the room,” I told him. “Eavesdropping is rude.”
“I’m sorry, but when I heard my name, I thought it might be something I needed to know.” He hesitated. “And when Paladin Eiliesor said it wasn’t safe for you to leave the citadel, he looked like he meant it. I needed to hear why. I can’t do a good job of worrying about you unless I know what I’m supposed to be worried about.”
“The only thing you need to be worried about is singing. And you don’t need to worry about that. You’ll be splendid as usual.”
“You’re avoiding my question.”
“You’re ignoring my avoiding.”
“How else am I supposed to find out what’s going on? Whenever I walk by, everyone stops talking. I walk down the halls at the citadel, and the Guardians stare. I think some of them are afraid of me. They don’t need to be.” He looked down. “I don’t want them to be,” he said quietly.
Crap again.
Piaras wanted to be a Guardian more than anything. It looked like yesterday’s damage wasn’t only to sabotaged shields. Nothing stomped on a teenager’s already fragile self-esteem like being ostracized from day one by the men you most admired.
“Now everyone knows what I did to those Guardians.” A muscle twitched in his jaw. “All this is just the maestro displaying the freak.”
I looked directly into those liquid brown eyes. “You are not a freak. Just because you didn’t mean to put those Guardians to sleep doesn’t change what you accomplished. And yes, I said ‘accomplished.’ If you were on a battlefield aiming at the enemy, what you did would get you called a hero, not a freak. You have a rare and powerful gift, and that can intimidate people, because they only see the gift and not the person behind it. You are not a freak—and don’t you dare let anyone tell you otherwise.”
I saw a flicker of what may have been belief in his dark eyes. “Thank you.”